JOIN USMasaan
Hindi (A), Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
Cast: Sanjay Mishra, Richa Chaddha, Vicky Kaushal, Shweta Tripathi, Nikhil Sahni, Bhagwan Tiwari
What do you call a recipe that has the best of gourmet ingredients around, requires split-second steps to cook, is a visual treat if you are inspired by realism, and falls short of the taste you expect it to have, but doesn’t entirely disappoint? In film form, you call it Neeraj Ghaywan’s debut film “Masaan”.
What else can you call the Indo-French production directed by Anurag Kashyap-assisting Ghaywan, co-written by him and Varun Grover (who is also responsible for the screenplay), and set to music by Indian Ocean with lyrics and melodies too beautiful not to move you?
“Masaan”, a reference to the Hindu crematorium where macabre last rites involve breaking the skull so the spirit of the deceased can escape, is a social commentary that evokes every major emotion in a major way, but somehow fails to stay with the audience as a whole after the credits roll.
When Devi Pathak (Chaddha in a vulnerable yet strong role) gets caught in a police raid at a seedy hotel, the boy she is with commits suicide. The corrupt police inspector (Tiwari) conducting the raid pressures Devi and her father Vidyadhar (the massively underrated Mishra) to pay a Rs 3 lakh bribe for not framing Devi for abetting the boy’s suicide, threatening to upload on YouTube the clip he had shot of Devi during the raid.
On the other end of the spectrum is Deepak (a darkly handsome Kaushal), who comes from a family of Doms — lower-caste people who burn bodies for a living — and falls in love with Shaalu (a sweet and bubbly Tripathi), who belongs to a higher caste.
The human interactions, be it Deepak and Shaalu’s hauntingly sweet love story or the changing relationship between Vidyadhar and Jhonta (Sahni), his prepubescent helper at the shop, receive a treatment of realism that never makes them feel contrived. The use — and in some cases non-use — of music and songs are a lesson in filmmaking.
Where “Masaan” fails is its flow. The biggest culprits are scenes that take too long to come to obvious conclusion. As a result, the film’s relatively short runtime of 1 hour and 49 minutes seems much longer.
Nevertheless, “Masaan” is definitely a true successor of the style of filmmaking that the likes of Anurag Kashyap have inspired. And a welcome change from the opulent spectacle called Bollywood.